Degrees :
BA, University of Tennessee
MA, University of Wisconsin
PhD, University of Wisconsin

Biography / Academic Interests :
Gerry Milligan authored and co-directed the passage of CSI’s new Italian Studies Major, officially launched in 2010. His research interests are Italian Renaissance literature, gender studies and women writers of late-medieval/Renaissance Europe. In addition to his classes on Italian language, he teaches courses on Medieval and Renaissance literature and culture. He encourages students to investigate literature as productions of cultures that are distant in time, yet have informed contemporary life in interesting and unexpected ways. Professor Milligan often focuses on social histories of the past in tandem with literary representations in order to question our assumptions of pre-modern life. Students have specifically enjoyed his teaching modules on women's makeup, Renaissance dress, and sexuality. Taking advantage of New York's cultural richness, he organizes trips to the Cloisters Museum, the Frick collection, and Italian cinema events. Additionally, he encourages students to travel beyond New York, especially to study abroad programs in Italy. While he was a student himself, Professor Milligan participated in several study abroad programs in both Italy and France and then later went to work in Italy as a coordinator for several universities' programs. Because of his sincere interest in study abroad, he has been an active participator in the development and continuation of CSI's "Isola Scholarship," which has sent several deserving students to Italy.

Scholarship / Publications :
Having finished his graduate work in 2003, Professor Milligan is quickly establishing himself as one of the few scholars on masculinity in Italian Renaissance. He was a fellow at Harvard’s University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy (2007-08).
Select publications include:

The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain. Eds. Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010). Includes essay, Gerry Milligan, “Proving Masculinity before God and Women: Laura Terracina and Chiara Matraini Writing War in the Renaissance”